<p>Cuca Martinez is the youngest child in a brood of five born in pre-revolutionary Cuba. At the age of ten she is sent to live with her godmother; at the age of sixteen she heads for Havana in search of work. The city she discovers is a sultry capital of music and seduction, where life is lived to the beat of mambo and rhumba, and where every event seems a sensual invitation. There she meets Juan, the love of her life, only to see him disappear for eight years. When he returns, on the eve of the Revolution, Cuca believes her dreams are finally realized, but the political climate and his own shady dealings force him into exile in America. </p>And so Cuca, like Cuba itself, waits—for the promised dreams of happiness, plenty, and love—while she watches the country slide into repressive slumber. And while she waits, Cuca and her friends struggle to survive: they improvise, they scavenge, they make love, they remember, and above all, they talk. A finalist for the Planeta Prize, Spain’s most prestigious literary award,<em> I Gave You All I Had</em> is an audacious, brazen, and exuberant work of fiction.<br />